General Principles for Accessibility

  • Whenever possible, use structural elements to structure your document. Use built-in headings and lists instead of relying on manual formatting on documents, slides, and tables. If available, start from a template.

  • Don’t use color as the only way to communicate information. If you are using colors, make sure to have sufficient contrast.

  • Put alt text (text descriptions) on images and graphs. (More info)

  • Make sure all videos you are using have accurate captions and a transcript.

Examples

Use of structural elements in LaTeX

Bad (not using latex structure) 
\texbf{1. My Section}
Good (using latex structure) 
\section{My Section}

\subsection*{My unnumbered Subsection}

or

Bad (not using predefined latex structure) 
$\cdot$ Item 1
$\cdot$ Item 2
Good (using predefined latex structure ‘itemize’) 
\begin{itemize}
\item Item 1
\item Item 2
\end{itemize}

Use of colors in LaTeX

Bad (not enough contrast) 
\textcolor{red}{...}
\textcolor{green}{...}
Good (sufficient contrast) 
\textcolor{blue}{...}
\textcolor{teal}{...}

Generally, the following LaTeX colors should have sufficient contrast over white background:

`blue`, `purple`, `teal`, `violet`, `black`, `darkgray`